Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Aurelia
Ididn’t move for a long time, just stood there with the brittle wind on my face and the taste of him still on my lips. I thought I knew pain—war, loss, exile—but heartbreak had its own kind of cruelty. It lingered. It burned without flame or smoke.
Rydian’s words spun through me on a loop I couldn’t silence. I was meant to be your shield. Not your equal. Not your choice.
The gods had made him into my weapon, and me the reason he would fall.
How could the Fates be so merciless as to weave love into a prophecy designed for ruin?
Then again, it hadn’t been the Fates at all.
It had been my father. The Furiosities. Hel’s gods meddling, as Patamoi had put it. I was starting to agree.
I thought I’d guessed Rydian’s secret. The heir to the Onyx Throne. But there had been a much heavier burden behind it. One he carried on shoulders made of steel, it seemed.
When he’d walked away, the shadows had swallowed him whole, as if the realm itself had conspired to swallow him up. Maybe it had. Maybe it would before everything was over.
I didn’t sleep that night. I tried—gods, I tried—but every time I closed my eyes, I saw him walking away again, saw the resignation in his face when he said it would be his honor to die for me.
No one should ever look so beautiful while saying something so tragic.
By the time dawn broke, I’d buried what was left of my heart beneath the same armor I’d worn since the night my own court had been cursed to sleep. And I swore to use the jagged pieces of my broken heart to cut them all down before I was done.
Beneath my skin, my furyfire burned and burned. It had been growing ever since the night I’d used it on Duron. As if doing so had unleashed some torrent I hadn’t known before. Whatever well of magic I’d felt these last years, it was suddenly much deeper.
I’d woken a beast—and that beast was me.
I had a feeling, when I was ready to unleash it, the destruction would be absolute. So, for now, I left it sleeping, waiting in a sort of hibernation that only stoked the embers hotter for the moment I’d let it come alive once more.
The air outside the tent was crisp, laced with pine and decaying leaves, the ground covered in frost. The camp slept—tents still and quiet in the pre-dawn. I went to work, stoking the fire and setting out water to boil for coffee and tea.
Keres slipped out of the tent behind me, dressed in fighting leathers and a thick cloak that one of the Withered had gifted her.
Her hair was braided and coiled at the nape of her neck.
She sat near the fire pit, sharpening her blades in slow, deliberate strokes.
The sound of steel on stone broke the stillness like a heartbeat.
“You’re up early,” she said without looking at me.
“So are you,” I replied.
She studied me over the edge of her dagger, eyes and scars half-hidden beneath the fall of her hair. “You look terrible.”
I snorted. “Thanks. I didn’t sleep much,” I admitted.
“I didn’t think you would,” she said, turning back to her blade. Her tone wasn’t cruel. Just knowing. Of course she knew. Rydian’s biggest secret, the one they’d all been waiting for him to tell me.
The fire crackled and sputtered, throwing a spark of orange between us. For a moment, her expression softened. “You don’t have to carry all of it alone, you know. The rest of us are here too.”
“I know.”
She looked up sharply. “Do you? Because I know I can be…”
“Scary?”
“Unapproachable,” she said, glaring.
I grinned. “Go on.”
“We all understand what’s at stake. We’ve always understood,” she added in a low voice. “But you’re just now finding out. It makes sense that you need some time to process. So, I’m here if you want to talk.”
I swallowed. “I’m not great at that—talking, I mean. But I’m working on it.”
That earned a faint smirk. “Probably for the best. Slade talks enough for all of us combined.”
I almost smiled. “He does, doesn’t he?”
She sheathed her dagger and stood, brushing dirt from her trousers. “Eirnan’s men will be back soon. If the tunnels are what he said, we’ll need to be ready to move. Tonight’s frost will likely be a freeze, and we’d do better inside a cave.”
A freeze. The phrase landed like an omen. Each one carried Heliconia closer.
I nodded. “Let’s hope he’s found us a way in.”
Keres hesitated, then said more quietly, “This thing weighing on you… set it down before we march. There’s too much at stake to fight yourself and her at the same time.”
I looked at her, surprised by the softness in her voice. “I’ll try.”
She gave a curt nod, the moment gone as quickly as it came, and stalked off toward the supply tents where a couple of Withered had begun gathering items for breakfast.
I stayed where I was, watching the sun creep through the trees. Frost glittered on every branch, turning the world into a prism of glass. The light didn’t melt anything—it only made the cold beautiful.
Around camp, more of the Withered were stirring, their murmurs rising like a prayer. Rydian did not emerge from his tent. I wondered if he ever returned to it last night.
Vanya brought me a bowl of stew, steaming and deliciously warm in my palms. She ushered me into the war tent, insisting I stay warm while I filled my belly.
“Thank you,” I told her gratefully. “This is delicious.”
She dipped her chin.
“You never told me what happened to you,” I said between bites. “The night I left Grey Oak, I mean.”
“After I delivered your note to Eirnan, I waited in the forest outside the city until after the attack,” she said. “Any Withered who made it to the meeting point joined us and fled. The ones who were lost… It was terrible leaving them behind, but we had no choice.”
“I’m sorry for those losses,” I said and meant it.
She shook her head. “Don’t be. You gave us the chance to stand up against what was done to us. And now we are free.”
I ate quickly, grateful for Vanya’s company.
Eirnan arrived as I finished up, bringing two scouts with him, their cloaks rimmed with frost. Their faces were gaunt, but their eyes were bright as Vanya waved them into the tent.
“We found the tunnels,” one of them said without preamble. “Hidden beneath the north face of Nygard Peak. Collapsed in parts, but passable if we dig. We saw smoke on the ridge too—Heliconia’s army is close. We can only pray the gods keep us from their notice before we can get to the opening.”
The others had arrived by then—Thorne and Daegel, Keres joining us with her usual scowl. The fire crackled between us, painting our faces gold and shadow.
“She looks ready to mobilize them,” Eirnan’s scout said grimly.
He’d thrown his cloak back to reveal a youthful face at odds with the lines and wrinkles etched into it. My heart ached for him.
“She’s moving faster than we thought,” Thorne said.
“No, she was always moving toward this; she was just doing it quietly for a time,” I replied. “She wasn’t only licking her wounds in Concordia after casting the curse. She was creating this army. Training them. We’re only just catching up.”
Daegel leaned over the map, tracing the path north with one gloved finger. “If we go through the tunnels, we’ll come out behind the war camp. Strategically, that will likely put us closer to the prisoner, but it’s less defensible as an escape.”
“Which means we’ll have to fight our way back through once we find Lesha,” Keres said.
I shook my head. “Not if we don’t give them the chance.”
“You have a plan,” Slade said.
“We’ll go in quietly. Daegel can use his shadows to shield us.
” Daegel nodded. “The rest of us will focus on taking out the eyes and ears—sentries, scouts, anyone who might raise the alarm. We’ll get Lesha before they know we’re there.
Once we have her, we have to assume they’ll have found us out. So, we go out with a bang.”
Slade cleared his throat. “And by a bang, you mean—”
“Furyfire,” I said, flames licking inside my veins at the permission it’d heard me give it.
They all studied me, nodding as if they’d noted the power I intended to unleash and found it acceptable.
“Your flame will only alert them to your identity, Your Highness,” Eirnan warned. “The army will turn its full force on hunting us down.”
“I don’t intend for there to be an army left when I’m done.”
He bowed his head slightly. “Then we’ll follow your command, Aurelia of Sevanwinds. Until the end.”
His words sank like a stone in my chest. Until the end. The same phrase Rydian had used hours ago, his voice breaking under the weight of it.
I forced myself to meet Eirnan’s gaze. “Let’s make sure it isn’t our end.”
The meeting ended, and the others began to file out.
I caught Slade before he could follow.
“Have you seen Rydian?” I asked.
“He took the night watch guarding the perimeter,” Slade said. “Should be back soon to break camp with us. Don’t know when the bastard ever sleeps.”
He shook his head as he strode out.
I followed and saw that the camp had come alive—tents disassembled, ropes loosened, supplies packed; the muted rhythm of purpose. The frost had begun to melt, but even underneath the watery autumn sun, a distinct trace of winter swept down from the mountains.
I turned northward, toward the horizon where the peaks gleamed white in the distance. Nygard Peak rose from among them, taller than the rest. Somewhere beyond it, Lesha waited. On its ridge, Heliconia’s army was gathering, her power growing stronger with every heartbeat.
My hands curled into fists. For the first time since the curse, I wasn’t afraid of what I was going to face. Rydian was right; I’d been gifted the power to claim this realm as my own. It sang in my blood. Whispered in my heart. Clung to the fabric of my soul.
So, I would use it. For the survival of the fae of this realm, not the victory of a war between the Fates and Furiosities. The gods could write whatever ending they wanted. I would be the one to set the page on fire.